Measuring Human Interest in First‐Year College Writing Textbooks

Abstract

Abstract Items from reading interest checklists as well as Flesch readability and human interest scores were compared to 311 questionnaire responses from first‐year college writing students. For two chapters of their writing textbooks, students responded to items culled from interest checklists. These data were analyzed to reveal relationships among questionnaire items and between general student response and Flesch readability and human interest scores. To reveal elements students perceived as promoting interest or reading ease, questionnaire data were resolved into five principal components. Two components seem to correlate strongly with interest, while three relate to interest significantly, but not strongly. No significant relationship appeared between Flesch formula data and student perceptions of interest and reading ease. The study suggests that similar analyses might be undertaken to see whether these conclusions generalize to introductory textbooks from other disciplines.